It's dangerous to put the two leaders alone in a room together. Just look at their last meeting

Fiona Hill, Trump's Kremlin adviser, said she considered pulling a fire alarm or faking an emergency to end the press conference

- Andrew Roth

The lessons of Helsinki are clear: putting Donald Trump alone in a room with Vladimir Putin is an unpredictable and often dangerous affair. In 2018 the two leaders met at the invitation of Sauli Niinistö, the Finnish president, to discuss a collapse in US-Russia relations, accusations of election interference and the grinding war in east Ukraine, among other topics.

By the time he came out of the room, Trump looked dazzled by the Kremlin leader. Asked at a press conference about the conclusions of the US intelligence community that Russia had interfered in the elections, Trump said: "President Putin says it's not Russia. I don't see any reason why it would be."

Fiona Hill, Trump's senior Kremlin adviser on the US national security council, later said that she had considered pulling a fire alarm or faking a medical emergency to end the press conference.

Somehow, the stakes are even higher as Trump and Putin plan to meet tomorrow in Anchorage, Alaska, where Trump has said the two will discuss "land swapping" in Putin's first meeting with a G7 leader since his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. European leaders are fearful Trump could once again emerge from a closed-door meeting preaching the Kremlin gospel.